'Occupy the Voting Booth'-Thousands March to Protect the Vote

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over the last year we've witnessed an unprecedented [color=#496a8b]gop war on voting, with a dozen republican governors and state legislators passing laws to restrict voter registration drives, require birth certificates to register to vote, curtail early voting, mandate government-issued photo ids to cast a ballot and disenfranchise ex-felons who've served their time. the brennan center for justice has estimated that "these new laws could make it significantly harder for more than [color=#496a8b]5 million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012," and notes that "these new restrictions fall most heavily on young, minority and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities."

How funny.......sure I can't be the only one who wonders at the fact that so many of these "disenfranchised" voters are from groups that heavily favor Democratic candidates?

What I don't get is the outrage over felons not being allowed to vote. For as long as I can remember hearing it, a convicted felon surrenders both his passport (or the right to obtain one) and the right to vote for life....when did that change??

And really: shouldn't someone who casts a ballot in this country be a CITIZEN of this country? 'Nuff said.

Along the same lines, many of us can't help but wonder why so many of these laws that claim to "protect" us from voter fraud (that nobody seems able to document) are aimed directly at people who tend to vote democratic.

This includes a chart of the restrictions to voting by state. It is not as clear cut as many of us thought.

No federal laws exist on felon voting per se. Felon voting has not been regulated federally although some argue that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can be applied to felon disenfranchisement and that Congress has the authority to legislate felon voting in federal elections.

My personal belief is that if you have paid for your crime you should have the right to vote. Why would we continue to punish a person who has successfully turned his life around? If we continue to restrict people who have paid for their crime it is being used as a shaming tactic (in my mind). Don't we want people to grow and change? Become good citizens? Isn't voting part of good citizenship?

I don't get the outrage on having to present a photo ID to vote. For crying out loud, you have to do that to rent movies in some places. Why not to vote? And why, for crying out loud, would ANYBODY who is a citizen want to make it easier for a non-citizen to vote?

I don't have many problems with having an ID. The issue can be one of which IDs are acceptable.

I like seeing voting made as easy as possible. I once had to make an emergency trip out of town on election day. I had not done absentee voting as I planned to vote in the booth. I was happily surprised when I was allowed to do an absentee ballot in the airport. If restrictions on voting existed then which prevented me from voting it would have been sad. Now, having done it I think to curtail such things would be criminal.
Our turnout for elections is so low. Anything that makes it lower decreases democracy. Things that increase turnout make it a more representative government. Why fear that? unless you are one of those power hungry forces such as the Koch bros. who really will do almost anything to get their agenda, even if it is not what is wanted by the people.

I don't have many problems with having an ID. The issue can be one of which IDs are acceptable.

I like seeing voting made as easy as possible. I once had to make an emergency trip out of town on election day. I had not done absentee voting as I planned to vote in the booth. I was happily surprised when I was allowed to do an absentee ballot in the airport. If restrictions on voting existed then which prevented me from voting it would have been sad. Now, having done it I think to curtail such things would be criminal.
Our turnout for elections is so low. Anything that makes it lower decreases democracy. Things that increase turnout make it a more representative government. Why fear that? unless you are one of those power hungry forces such as the Koch bros. who really will do almost anything to get their agenda, even if it is not what is wanted by the people.

Our state is now all vote-by-mail. And it hasn't really increased voter turnout. Additionally, when thousands of ballots don't get mailed out, which has happened, those folks are in a pickle.

That being said, we requested absentee ballots about 20 years ago, because the DH was always working on Tuesdays...and working for him meant 37,000 feet, leaving before the voter places were open and getting back long after they closed. But then we always vote...some people don't

An 84 year old Village Trustee in the central Wisconsin community of Brokaw (BRO-caw) says she may lose her right to vote because of Wisconsin's new voter I.D. law. The case has now attracted the attention of the ACLU.

Ruthelle Frank has lived in the same neighborhood in the Village of Brokaw for 84 years.

She was delivered at home on August 21, 1927, and there were complications. Frank ended up partially paralyzed. But she persevered, and took pride in being a citizen. She's voted in every election since her first one in 1948.

But Frank thinks she may miss the next election, because she doesn't have a driver's license, and she never got the birth certificate she needs for a state approved voter I.D.

"My birth is registered in Madison," she says. "But my father's name is spelled wrong, and my mother's first name is spelled wrong."

It costs $20 for a birth certificate, but Frank has been told that to get the information corrected, it could cost $200. She says she shouldn't have to spend a dime.

"I'm not gonna put out any money in order to vote," she says. "I think it was even guaranteed in the Constitution, the right to vote."

In 1996, Ruthelle Frank was elected to the Brokaw Village Board. She still serves there. But when she runs for re-election this spring, she worries that won't even be able to vote for herself....

This story is heart breaking, appalling, and just the first of many similar that we're likely to hear as new voter suppression laws, jammed through by Republican legislatures around the country, take effect before next year's 2012 Presidential election cycle.

Dorothy Cooper is a 96-year old African-American woman from Tennessee. Born before women even had the right to vote, she's now been voting religiously for some 70 years without a problem, even before the Voting Rights of 1965 during the the Jim Crow-era in the South. At least until now.

The newly-elected GOP legislature in her state has rammed through a disenfranchising polling-place Photo ID restriction law which has now made it incredibly difficult for Cooper to cast her legal vote, just like some 500,000 legal and largely Democratic-leaning voters in Tennessee....

...Cooper has never had a driver's license. So, at 96 years old, she worked to make her way to the DMV in advance of next year's election and presented her birth certificate and all sorts of other identifying documents in order to receive the supposedly "free" state ID she is legally entitled to receive under the new law so that she can once again cast a vote next year.

However, as Cooper has gotten married since birth and her name has thus changed in the bargain, she was denied the ID, as she was unable to find and produce her marriage certificate to prove that she was who she said she was....

World War II veteran Darwin Spinks went to a testing center last month to get a photo ID for voting purposes. Under the law, any resident without a photo ID is supposed to get one free of charge. But when Spinks asked for an ID, he was told he had to pay an $8 fee:

Spinks said Tuesday he needed the photo because when his driver's license with a photo expired the last time, the driver testing center issued him a new license without a photo on it. State law allows people over 60 to get a non-photo driver's license.

The retired print shop worker who moved here 17 years ago said he told people at the driver center he wanted an ID for voting purposes. He was sent from one line to another to have a picture taken, then was charged.

"I said, 'You mean I've got to pay again?' She says, 'Yes,'" explained Spinks, a resident of County Farm Road, who was stationed on the USS Goshen in World War II and was called to duty again for the Korean War.

Forcing an American citizen to pay in order to vote is a clear violation of the constitution's 24th Amendment: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or the other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax." ...

a jury found a former republican governor's aide guilty of election fraud on tuesday over an automated phone message he authorized on election day last year that prosecutors said aimed at suppressing black voter turnout....

...the message assured listeners that ehrlich's democratic opponent, incumbent martin o'malley, as well as president barack obama, who was not up for election that day, were already "successful."

"our goals have been met," said the message, delivered in a woman's voice. "the polls are correct and we took it back. we're ok. relax. everything's fine. the only thing left is to watch it on tv tonight."

the jury ruled the calls knowingly failed to include a mandatory line indicating which candidate approved them and willfully attempted to alter voters' decision on whether or not to vote....